1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of image processing. More specifically, the invention relates to image or motion video compression.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the current state of the art, image capture devices, those devices which represent an environment or scene by electrical signals that are proportional to the color and/or intensity of light present in the scene, are often manufactured and designed using CCD (Charge Coupled Device) technology. A CCD image capture device utilizes small photocells to generate electrical signals that are related to the incident light from the scene that strikes the photocells. The imaging device contains a two-dimensional array of such photocells such that a series of signals across an entire focused upon scene can be captured and stored. More recently, CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) imager devices have been developed which function to provide the same sort of output signals that CCD devices to but often at a lower cost and complexity. Examples of common imaging devices include scanners, motion video cameras and digital still cameras.
Many of these imaging devices, whether based on CMOS or CCD technology, are designed to be compliant with a transmission standard known as NTSC (National Television Systems Committee). One stricture of NTSC is that an image should be transmitted not in successive scan rows (of the imager array), but with odd rows transmitted separately from the even rows. This process of separating odd and even rows is commonly referred to as an interlaced scan. An NTSC signal has light intensity information encoded as analog voltage levels, color information encoded in the phase and amplitude of a color carrier frequency and so on. When an NTSC signal is forwarded for image processing to a computer system, the computer system utilizes a signal converter to transform the analog encoded information into luminance and chrominance digital values for the transmitted image. The most commonly used luminance-chrominance format for the digital representation of images is known as YCrCb (a digital color system referred to as the CCIR (International Consultative Committee on Broadcasting) 601 color space). The conversion from NTSC to YCrCb is serial in nature and due to the serial processing character of most commercially available microprocessors. Subsequent image processing is also performed in serial. One notable exception to the predominance of serial data processing is Intel""s MMX(TM) technology based processors which use SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) processing. To complement the use of such processors in conjunction with imaging devices, it would be useful to have parallel processing of the cells used to capture digital values. Further, a key factor in the practical application of the digital photocell is that the relatively long integration times of the analog photocell portion allows the use of a relatively slow, but therefore simple method of digitization. For motion video, which involves certain inherently serial operations such per-pixel difference calculations (where the difference between pixels and/or frames rather than the original values are encoded), it is useful to implement an architecture that allows such calculations to be performed on the imaging device rather than strictly through a host processor.
What is disclosed is an apparatus comprising an analog photocell adapted to capture light energy incident upon it as an analog signal, a sample-and-hold amplifier coupled to the photocell and adapted to store the analog signal and a digital converter coupled to the amplifier, the converter transforming the analog signal into a digital value, the value proportional to the amount of the light energy.